


Under My Skin

by starsandgraces



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Tattoos, Twins, Wolfsbane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 07:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandgraces/pseuds/starsandgraces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On their eighteenth birthday, Derek and Laura get tattoos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under My Skin

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been in my head for several months now, and this prompt seemed like the perfect excuse to finally get it finished! Thanks to Helen for making me love Derek and Laura as twins. Written for prompt 6 (Family) from [fullmoon_ficlet](http://fullmoon-ficlet.livejournal.com/)

Like most mornings, when Derek wakes, he takes a moment to remember. Unlike most mornings, Laura isn't beside him. Everything crashes over him at once: their family, the fire, and a deepening sense of panic that something has happened to his sister.

"Laura?"

"I'm here," she says, coming back into their bedroom with wet hair. "Happy birthday."

"You too," Derek murmurs, pulling the comforter up to his nose. The landlord doesn't turn on the heat until the beginning of December, and it's early November, their birthday. Without Laura's body heat the bed is already cooling around him.

"Do you still want to do it today? We can wait—"

"We've waited long enough. We should have done it as soon as we got our fake IDs." He scrunches up his eyebrows into a scowl.

"Those are for _important_ things," Laura says. "Things we need to live, not drinking or tattoos or whatever. You agreed."

"Only because drinking doesn't do anything for us," Derek mutters.

"Get up, brat, you need to go to the grocery store before our appointment."

Derek bares his teeth at her and wraps his hands tightly around the comforter, and they tussle over it. Derek has the advantage of weight and being lower down, but Laura will tear it in half before she lets him beat her, so he isn't pushing it.

"Why do I have to go?" he asks. "I haven't showered and you have."

"Because I said so." Laura seizes another fistful and tugs until Derek risks falling out of the bed.

He flops onto his back and lets her pull the comforter off of him. Goosebumps rise all over his body as the cold air hits his skin and Laura's eyes soften at the display of vulnerability.

"We'll go later, together," she concedes.

Derek showers while she dries her hair and makes their breakfast. Normally, they'd each search something out for themselves before school or work, but today is a special occasion. That, and Laura's the one who knows how to make the wolfsbane tea they both need to drink.

A very low concentration of wolfsbane in their bodies will stop them from healing fast enough for a human to notice.

They eat first, which was a mistake, because the tea is the vilest thing Derek's ever tasted. He holds his nose and gulps the rest of the tea, eyes watering as his mouth burns, then tingles. It's actually a relief when it finally settles into numbness so Derek doesn't have to paw at his tongue. He can still taste the bitter wolfsbane clinging to the inside of his lips and the back of his teeth, so he washes it down with a soda.

At least Laura does the same thing, pulling an offended face. "We can't back out now," she says, "because I'm never drinking that shit again."

Derek loves her so much in that moment.

They ride the subway to the tattoo studio, hand in hand and silent. People—humans who can't smell the _pack_ on them—mistake them for a couple sometimes, but Laura's never seemed to care about that, so Derek doesn't either. They've been together since long before they were born and neither of them wants to give up that closeness, especially now.

The building smells hospital-clean when they get inside, which Derek doesn't like. Only Laura's firm grip on his hand stops him from bolting back out into the street, where the air might not be clean, but it doesn't smell like the place they left Uncle Peter.

The artists here assume they're a couple as well, wanting matching tattoos, until they see their IDs with the same date of birth.

"It's meaningful to our family," Laura says when her artist asks her about the triskellion.

Derek stays quiet. He doesn't much like humans.

He and Laura both remove their coats and shirts before they can do anything else. Derek picked the spot between his shoulder blades for his tattoo, while Laura chose the base of her sternum, between her breasts. She loosens the bikini top she wore for the occasion to keep it out of the way of the stencil her artist is applying.

Derek checks his stencil quickly before lying face down on the couch. The tacky plastic sticks to his bare skin and he grits his teeth, turning to face Laura.

"You're such a baby," she says, reaching across the gap separating them for his hand.

The contact helps, and it helps more when his artist presses the machine to his back, drawing neatly curving lines over his spine. Derek shuts his eyes tightly, clenches his jaw and squeezes Laura's hand every time the needle passes through the skin above his bones. And when the artist switches to shading in the outline, it feels like he's being peeled by a malicious cat who knows where to find each and every nerve ending with the point of its claws.

Laura's hand twitches in his as her artist hits a painful spot, and Derek opens his eyes to look at her. "Okay?" he asks, the edge of fear in his voice audible only to her.

"I'm with you, aren't I?" she replies, tightening her fingers around his more deliberately. "We always keep each other okay."

"Yeah," Derek murmurs. Laura's right: if they stay together, nothing will ever hurt them. Nothing they can't overcome. He meets her eye and mouths, "My alpha."

Laura nods her acknowledgement, serene, and Derek loves her even more.


End file.
